Imagine that you were Prophet Hosea, a young man in church, loving God with all your heart, hardworking, in the choir and prayer departments of the house of God, with lofty dreams of your wedding day and that pretty girl in the choir that you have been eyeing, whom you would soon marry after her graduation from the university next summer, and thereafter move to your new apartment in that quiet section of town. Then it happens.
And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her.
Genesis 34:2.
That is the story of Dinah, the only known daughter of Jacob (although Genesis 34:16 speaks of “daughters”). During the 600-mile journey from Mesopotamia (where Jacob had been on exile for about twenty years) back to Canaan (as instructed by the Lord), the family passed through Shechem, a city (or “country”) that bore the same name as its iconic prince.
There is one female gender name that has entered into history with all the connotations of disdain and shame; a pretty-sounding name that no decent mother would call her loving daughter. The name is Delilah, which, according to some Bible dictionaries, means “languishing,” and by others is translated as “delicate” – the delicate one. It is next of kin to another kindred female name, Jezebel. Delilah’s story is told in the Bible book of Judges, chapter 16, in the episode that saw the strong Samson ignobly put out of service by that woman’s soft touches.
